This movie is well done and the plot is unique. A teenage boy who attends the Mozart Academy of Music is magically transported to the world of The Magic Flute. There he actually performs in the opera. It's great to see F. Murray Abraham play the headmaster considering he played Antonio Salieri so well in the movie Amadeus. I do recommend that people see the original opera on stage to fully grasp the scope of the music and story, or as it is called the libretto in opera terms.
This movie is entertaining and puts this opera in a whole new light. It's great for Mozart fans and fans of a good love story. It introduces the magic of Mozart to the next generation.
Plot summary
From Executive Producer Roland Emmerich (Moonfall) comes a captivating film that follows a teen on two journeys: one into a prestigious boarding school to fulfill his aspirations as a singer, and another into a parallel world filled with fantasy and adventure. Tim (Jack Wolfe, Shadow And Bone) has been dreaming his whole life about attending Mozart All Boys Music School, but already his first days there confront him with a hostile headmaster (F. Murray Abraham, The White Lotus),the stresses of a first love, and serious doubts about the authenticity of his singing voice. When he discovers a mystical gateway in the school's library, he is pulled into the fantastic cosmos of Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute, where imagination has no limits and the Queen of the Night (Sabine Devieilhe) reigns.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
Entertaining Movie With An Interesting Plot
Fun "adaption" of a well-loved opera
This is a straightforward movie - a framing story about our young protagonists in musical school, and the opera itself, played out simultaneously after the hero passes some magical gate every day for a few hours. The framing story seemed a bit cliché but never got the upper hand; the fantasy sequences are perfectly realised, with respect to the fairytale atmosphere of the libretto, so not too realistic but rather colourful and dreamlike.
As to the music, well, I'm not an opera gourmet; I rather liked how some of the arias were blared out with gusto and not too fine an intonation, but on the other hand, the queen's soprano really put goosebumps on my skin - it's quite an event hearing such a perfect and dramatic voice over a cinema sound system (pretty loud, too, in our case).
(I'm a sucker for choir movies, btw ... the human voice is the most beautiful of instruments!) The one thing I didn't understand about the music was the generic end-credits song, why not use Mozart again?
Overall, a hearty recommendation for all music lovers. We liked it very much, even though we're 50ish and the movie is clearly targeted at a younger audience - the school scenes, interior and exterior, are clearly inspired by Harry Potter, they even put in an Austrian railway viaduct similar to the one on the Mallaig line :)
One of my favourite films
I've always liked opera and The Magic Flute is one of my favourites.
You don't have to love the opera The Magic Flute, but it helps. I got goosebumps every time I heard the arias. The cast was great.
Jack Wolfe was great as Tim Walker and, during one of the scenes, he really did an awesome job showing his emotional pain.
Of course, they had to modify the opera by taking out some parts, modifying the location, or adapting it to the main movie storyline, otherwise the movie would run close to 3 and a half hours. They did a great job otherwise.
If they decide to release this in more theaters, I will definitely see it again.
I hope that they release this in DVD or Blu-Ray so I can watch it again and again.